Aren't Our Police Wonderful? Part 2

Just two weeks after a man died minutes after being knocked to the ground by a baton-wielding policeman, and only days after fresh film emerged showing a woman being punched in the face by a police officer, then whacked by his baton, their attention turned to my neck of the woods.

I was returning home in my car from a shopping trip this afternoon. I turned into the street from which my own street leads, and found myself driving between two rows of parked police cars. At least a dozen officers, some in riot gear, were standing in a bunch on the pavement.

I went home and unloaded my shopping, then decided to walk to the local shops to get the one item I had been unable to get at the other supermarket, feeding the ducks en route. Turning out of the end of my road, I found that the other street was now cordoned off, and neither people nor cars were being allowed through. The police wouldn't tell us why we were being kept out, but local people being the gossips they are, it emerged that there had been a report of a gun in one of the houses. SOme of the police were armed (still haven't seen a gun myself, though).

I'm sorry, but you hang around very obviously, for some time, a couple of hundred yards from the house you want to raid? Doesn't sound like the kind of urgent situation that justifies shutting off the whole street without explanation. Besides, people returning from the shops were still being allowed through from the other side of the cordon.

A bunch of local people who couldn't get through were hanging around. One woman whose house was on the other side of the cordon was not allowed through to get home. Even though it's now illegal "for security reasons" to photograph police in the UK, I was not the only one defying the ban.

Eventually, one by one, three young women and a very young man were led out handcuffed and taken to a police van.

After a while I went the long way round, got my shopping and had a cup of coffee, then went back along the river bank to feed the ducks. The cordon was gone, the odd police vehicle remained. Apparently it wasn't such a big deal after all.